Authors: Andromeda Romano-Lax
The two dictators were to meet the next afternoon in Hitler's private railcar. With one well-placed undercarriage bomb, French resistance could have deprived the world of two dictators, had anyone been aware of the plan. Meanwhile, afternoon gave way to evening, and the station's parking lot filled with motorcycles and official cars. The café across the street was crowded with gendarmes sipping double espressos, in preparation for a long vigil. Normal train traffic on the route had been interrupted, for security reasons. Officially, the tracks both south and north were "under repair."
Returning to the hotel, Al-Cerraz volunteered to Kreisler, "Maestro Delargo seems to be rubbing his hands. I hope the gout is not starting to bother him again."
That alarmed our Gestapo guard. He immediately called the front desk and inquired after local sources of cherries.
"Maybe it was the prawns he ate for lunch," Al-Cerraz volunteered between phone calls.
"He ate prawns?" Kreisler asked, looking queasy himself.
Al-Cerraz adopted a guilty expression. "We tried to stop him. He's the one you should be keeping a closer eye on."
The mischief I had known from our earliest train touring days had not been purged from Al-Cerraz's soul. I glared at him, incredulous, hoping that this tomfoolery had some purpose. In the meantime, Kreisler came and went, bringing me every type of produce he could procure at the last minute, including that item his superior officer's grandmama had vouched for. Over the course of an evening, I spooned the contents of three entire jars of preserved cherries into my mouth. Ever since, I haven't been able to look at a cherry without feeling sick.
Each jar bought us a half hour or so of freedom from Kreisler. We three gathered in Aviva's room; I looked out the window while Aviva and Al-Cerraz leaned their heads over a map sketched on a matchbook and took turns reading from a pocket-sized phrasebook:
"
Kaixo,
" Al-Cerraz said.
Aviva repeated: "
Kaikso.
"
"The
x
is like '
shhh.
'
Kaixo.
" He pushed on. "
Zer moduz?
"
"
Zer moduz
"
"
Nola esaten da hori euskaraz?
"
"Oh, Justo—I'm not going to remember that."
"But that way you can point to things and find out how to say them in Basque. It will help you with everything else."
"We 'll be with them for a few days at the most, until the next boat from Portugal. I don't plan to talk," Aviva said. "Only to listen."
"All right. Then here's one you should learn to recognize:
Kontuz!
"
"What does that mean?"
"Caution."
***
At one point when Kreisler returned to the room for the third or fourth time, cherry compote in hand, Al-Cerraz told him that he and Aviva were getting married. It astonished me how far he dared go.
"After the concert?" Kreisler asked.
"Just after."
"So this is an early honeymoon for you, so to speak."
Aviva's face lit up.
"Does that mean you'll let us go have a night on the town, just me and my girl?" Al-Cerraz asked.
Kreisler looked pained. "It's late. It's dark. Everything is closed. Better tomorrow, after the concert." He smiled. "After the concert, you have a nice dinner, you two alone. I will pay for the champagne."
That fit their—our—plans perfectly. Al-Cerraz's wizardry seemed to be working its spell again.
When Kreisler left again, Al-Cerraz went over the plan—what time we were expected at the station in the morning, to inspect the delivered piano and rehearse under Gestapo supervision, the point at which I would explain to Kreisler that my arthritis had flared up and I could not play, how they would execute a modified program. Then they would return to the hotel, leave again for their dinner—and wait by the seawall for that precise moment when the sky's peach blush faded to pink, then light purple, then blue, and the twin lighthouses winked on, alerting the fishing boat hiding beyond the sea stacks that they would be arriving. Then around the curve of the seawall and down the ancient steps to the quiet harbor, and to any of several anchored rowboats, floating there, waiting.
And I—I was not going with them. They had invited and urged me several times, but I hadn't the will. Instead, I accepted my land-based role in the charade. When Kreisler noted Al-Cerraz's and Aviva's absence, I would share his alarm that my friends had sneaked off for a romantic beach swim and not reappeared. Some gendarme would no doubt find the twisted, damp pile of discarded clothing—pants and shirt and lady's dress—on the seaweed-covered tidal rocks at the beach's farthest east margin, where the rocky hills sloped toward the shore. Two drownings. By that afternoon, Hitler would be well on his way east, and Franco south, and every local gendarme would be wiping his brow in relief at having survived the incursion of police and intelligence agents from two other nations. By comparison, the drownings of two visitors would stir little excitement. I would stay another day, frequenting cafés and restaurants and socializing with minor officials if it was required, and then return on the train on October 24, as my ticket stated.
And if Kreisler alerted other Gestapo officials insistent on questioning a convenient disappearance? Let them. My spirits had sunk beyond caring.
Al-Cerraz and I shared a room. Kreisler's was one door down; Aviva's a door beyond that. Sometime during the night, I heard a bed creak, the clink of glasses, the door opening and closing. Some hours later, it opened and closed again. Al-Cerraz's hand tugged at mine.
"She's having second thoughts," he whispered.
I told myself this was the last time he'd ever wake me in the night. I sat up, turned on the bedside lamp—
"No! Turn it off!"
"If it's about marrying you, I'm not surprised."
He sat at the corner of the bed, weighing it down.
"I said that so she'd leave, so that she could picture having a life."
"You don't want to marry her?"
"Of course I do. Someone should."
"
Someone
should?"
"Feliu, you could have done it long ago. She would have accepted. Your refusal to have a joyful, normal life can't be a death sentence for her."
I stared into the dark, too full of anger to speak. I did not feel that I was losing Aviva; I considered her already lost. How dare he dangle this shred of hope in front of me?
"She's in her room, wide awake, not being rational," Al-Cerraz continued. "She's going to fall apart and destroy everything, in front of everyone."
"She's stronger than you think."
"We 'll all be taken away. I need you to help me with this."
"You said this journey was the last favor you'd ever ask. I'm here at greater risk than either of you."
"Aviva ... the Gestapo..."
I raised my voice. "What about Franco? I'm sure he'd be all too pleased to add me to his trophy case."
In a low voice, he said, "So even you have nerves." He continued, "She knows I'm a bit of a storyteller—"
"A liar."
"A wishful thinker," he corrected me. "Everyone trusts you. The moral purist. She 'll have to hear it from you to believe it."
"To believe what?"
"To believe the thing that will allow her to let go, to start a new life. Help her close a door that should have been closed long ago. Some fantasies are destructive. And anyway, what you'll tell her is probably true."
The next morning, I was up before dawn, before Kreisler had come to get us. I stood outside his hotel door and heard his voice high and clear over the sound of running water. Sweet innocence, in unexpected places. He was singing while he shaved. In that moment, I decided to tell him.
"I'm not playing today."
He pulled me into his room and closed the door. "Your hands?"
"No," I said. His whole face relaxed. He excused himself to dress, pulling his black uniform over his underclothes, pulling a belt through the pants, strapping on a long knife in its black leather sheath.
"It's not the gout," I continued. "I've decided not to play on principle."
His face turned ashen.
I said, "Let me make this simple for you: Franco. Since he came to power, and I went into exile, I have refused to play the cello. This entire concert was a mistake. I can't perform for him. I won't."
The pause that followed was one of the longest in my life. I faced this young man, neck red from hurried shaving, stray white soap flecks in front of his large ears. He was at least a head taller than me, so I had to crane my neck to meet his conflicted stare. On the chair next to us: his peaked cap, with its death's-head emblem. Shadows danced at his jawline, at his temple, as he ground his teeth together.
Finally he said, "It is essential to trust a leader with all one's heart. Al-Cerraz—he is an opportunist. But I know you are a thoughtful person. For you to dislike the Caudillo that much..." He shook his head gravely. Then suddenly, he lifted his chin and opened his mouth. To my astonishment, he started to sing: "
Oh believe!
"
Flushing, he dropped his jaw and spoke—slowly and clearly, reciting the words that I recognized instantly:
Thou wert not born in vain!
Hast not lived in vain.
Suffered in vain.
What has come into being must perish.
What has perished must rise again.
The final movement from Mahler's Second Symphony—lines penned by a Jewish composer, banned in German occupied territory. I joined him, reciting more quietly:
Cease from trembling.
Prepare thyself to live.
We stopped there, not speaking, not moving: the most complete silence, round and rich, with the sky just beginning to lighten behind filmy window shades.
Then suddenly: an immense roar, as if we were being bombed. The floors of the hotel trembled and the framed pictures danced on the walls.
It was a convoy arriving: armored cars, military trucks, more motorcycles, spilling down from the road to the northeast. This was the advance guard, arriving by coastal road from the east. Kreisler said under his breath, "Lockdown."
He didn't say anything more to acknowledge what I had told him. We joined Al-Cerraz and Aviva for a morose
petit déjeuner,
and waited. At precisely ten o'clock, we were allowed to leave the hotel and ride in a black Mercedes to the train station, where Al-Cerraz confirmed that the piano, transported the day before from a chateau east of town, was in tune. Everything we'd seen so far—a few guards here and there, gendarmes at the café—was nothing compared to this. The entire town was under siege. Most people—unless they had been "invited" to the concert—stayed inside, doors and shutters latched.
Back to the hotel again, where we waited in the lobby, under a painting of Louis XIV. Outside, a banner with a Nazi swastika had been raised; not speaking, we watched it flutter in the wind.
Franco was to arrive by rail from the south at two o'clock. At ten past one, we were shuttled to the train station. The platform was decorated with more banners, flags of Germany and Spain. A hundred folding chairs awaited the audience. An official-looking railcar was parked on the far tracks, but we saw no sign of any occupant. Kreisler escorted us to a small private waiting room in the station, and left us there. "There will be a guard posted outside," he said. "For your security."
When we three were alone in the room, Al-Cerraz whispered, "Did you tell him?"
"I told him."
"I didn't expect so many police," Aviva whispered, voice breaking. "They'll have people with guns posted along on the seawall."
"They'll be watching the border and the station," Al-Cerraz said, more firmly. "The train will stay parked, for the meeting. Every person will be trying to get a glimpse of
him.
They'll be entranced."
"But how will we get away, to dinner? They're moving us place to place. They wouldn't even let us back to our rooms."
"Kreisler said you could go to dinner," I reminded her.
"But that was before all this—perhaps he didn't know how heavily they'd close down the town."
A knock at the door. Another black-uniformed guard—older, with gray streaks in his brown hair. Kreisler stood behind him, not speaking. The older officer faced me. "You're having a medical problem?"
Al-Cerraz grabbed at the guard's arm. "It's his hands—arthritis. He can't play the cello."
"Fine," the older guard said. "I will get you a baton. When the Führer and the Generalísimo are ready, and standing on the platform, you will conduct the civic orchestra."
I struggled for words. "I don't know what they play. I don't know what you'll allow us to play. Dvořák? Mendelssohn?"
"That is not allowed."
"What is allowed? You wouldn't allow a Spaniard to conduct Wagner, would you?"
"No."
"You wanted us to play Spanish music But this orchestra may not know Granados or Turina."
The guard furrowed his brow and clamped his jaws together. "Ravel! The
Bolero.
It is French, but it sounds Spanish."
"Dear God, not an amateur production of Ravel," Al-Cerraz whispered under his breath.
"That's not an easy work to perform, unrehearsed."
"It will fill the time. Mostly percussion, isn't it?" the guard asked.
And left.
Kreisler stayed behind. After the door had closed, he said quietly, "He will go and talk to the orchestra. They will tell him they don't have the instrumentation or sheet music for
Bolero"
The door opened again. A different man entered, smaller, with black hair and deep brown eyes, the hairline high and square. He was limping slightly. I didn't need the introduction—I had seen his picture in the newspapers: Goebbels.
Kreisler saluted and stood at attention, his back flat against the wall. Goebbels lowered himself into a chair that appeared from behind and addressed me. "We are disappointed that you have reason not to perform. If Goering were here, we might peek into his bag and try an injection of some kind, to relax the hands. But I'm not sure that would work."